


If you're looking for trouble, then count me in

by TheWritingCorner



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Afro-Latino Percy Jackson, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternative titles: Camp Half-Blood Gets a Makeover, Bitter Demigods that know Better than to turn to Kronos lamentably, But neither do most demigods, Demigods of Color, Does it count as redemption if he never goes to the dark side?, Gen, Greek Demigods Deserve Better, He still doesn't like the gods tho, In which Demigods help their parents but like... Begrudgingly, Just... A lot of Machinations with Capitalized M, Luke Castellan Redemption, Luke Castellan was kind of right about the gods, Of sorts? At this point Sandy is more of an OC than anything else, Other, Other Machinations, Percy & the Gang Get Adult Supervision™, Self-Insert, So they can get a little Revolution as a treat (but not really), or How to Make sure Greek Demigods Reach Adulthood 101, political machinations
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:13:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26397706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWritingCorner/pseuds/TheWritingCorner
Summary: Look, she did want to be a half-blood.Her bad.OrHer name is Cassandra Aguirre and she is a half-blood.That is theeasypart.The rest? Well, that is harder to explain.
Relationships: Original Female Characters & Original Male Character
Comments: 22
Kudos: 107





	1. Local Kid Decides to Ignore All Warnings Given to Her

Look, she  _ did  _ want to be a half-blood. 

Her bad. 

Like many others, once upon a time she read a story and when things got rough, she dreamed of it. Dreamed of belonging. Dreamed of being a hero, a fighter for the so-called ‘good guys’. She dreamed and dreamed, but she never thought she was a half-blood. Her father might have been named after a Greek God, he might have worked in a field that paralleled his godly counterpart, but he was not a god. She was not a half-blood, she did not  _ think  _ she could be a half-blood. It was just a passing fancy, a daydream to recede to when she desired to escape reality. 

Once upon a time, she was not a half-blood and because of this, she did not follow Percy Jackson’s advice. 

She did not close the books. 

To her, there was no danger. It wasn’t scary. It was a book and there was no way she would be killed in painful, nasty ways. 

After all, once upon a time she had been a normal kid, reading a book because she thought it was fiction. Great. She read on. She was an object of envy to the narrator, the  _ character _ , and she believed that none of that ever happened. 

She was normal. There was no recognition as she glimpsed upon the pages of the books she read and reread-there was nothing stirring inside-, so she did not stop reading immediately. She was not one of them. There was nothing on her for  _ them  _ to sense, not even after she knew of the story told between the pages of a seemingly fictional book. There was no sense of urgency, for she knew they were not coming for her. 

But she  _ was  _ warned. She couldn’t deny it. 

She simply chose not to heed those warnings. 

  
  


Her name was M̶͙̟̟͇͂̔̊į̷̭̘͕̣͇͓̟̭͖͇̭̣̙̺͋r̵͉̖̦̩̽̈́͑̾̉̂̉a̷̟̤̭̪͖̳̓̀̏͂̓͂́̊̒́̀͌̕n̷̖͉̝̺̮͇͙̬̒͊̏̄̽̀͠ͅd̶̡̦͔̰̯̯̬̦͍̹̼̙̏̆̈́͝a̸̡̡̹͙̮̦̹̥̪͉͚̣̼̍́ ̸̲͎̝͇̭͙͕͉͓̃̑̀O̸͙̤͚̲̯͗͆̄͛̽̑r̴̩͓̖̠͕͔͈͛̇͒̋̂͂͑̂̍̚͘ͅt̴̟̃̏̈̏͌̓̃̐̄̎̈̎̚͝ë̶͉̘́̐̉̑̈́g̴̨̢͇̼̥͉͉̤̭̖̏̏͊a̶̘͖͙̭̘̜̘̅. 

  
  


Her name is Cassandra Aguirre and she is a half-blood.

That is the easy part. 

The rest? Well, that is harder to explain. 

Her story, like any story, could have started at any point. Be it at the very beginning, halfway through, or at the very end; a story is still a story, especially if it needs to be told. And her story did need to be told, she knew  _ that  _ much. 

She wasn’t exaggerating. She wasn’t looking for attention. It would have been much much better if she could have just… Pretended her story wasn’t worth telling. Sadly, her story was a weird one and weird stories needed to be told. 

Still, when she really thought about it, Sandy had to admit that the best place to start was the summer in which her life began to get  _ truly  _ interesting. 

The summer of 1994. The midway point between her past and her future. 

The Aguirre family had decided to celebrate their new life in the United States with a road trip through the country. The plan was to start in California and end in Northern Virginia, with stops on the way. As new immigrants in the process of naturalization-and kind-of-tourists-, Eduardo Aguirre and Beatriz Rivero de Aguirre had decided-without telling their daughters- to also stop in various national monuments along the way. 

Lucia Aguirre, who usually went by Luci, was conflicted at this development as any seven year old who loved to travel but hated the heat.

And Sandy? Well, she was just happy that she was with her family. Yeah, the idea of being stuck on a car for hours and hours on end was kind of a drag, and don’t get her started on the hot weather.  _ Ugh _ . But! She was with her family, it was sunny  _ and  _ she got the whole trip to prepare for being stuck with a bunch of snooty-nosed eleven-and-twelve year olds in sixth grade. 

_ Children _ . 

Ugh. John Mulaney had been right when he had said that twelve year olds were mean, but like, in an accurate way. There was really no escaping them, not as an adult and especially not as a nine year old who had been moved up two grades because of her ‘outstanding academic achievements’ and blah blah blah. So, she was the smallest in the class  _ and  _ smarter than them. A bad combination. Really bad. If her weirdness was added to the mix? Well, her year wasn’t going to be fun. Not that it was the first time that her ADHD and her dyslexia had caused her problems, but once. Just once! She wished that it didn’t nerf her quite as much as it did. Kids could be cruel-and yeah, she included herself in that group-, and if one was different? Whoops. Things were not going to end well for them. And like, Sandy understood that it wasn’t fully their fault, really. Logically, she knew there was something  _ odd  _ about her. Little things that didn’t add up, small things that could be passed off as tricks of the light, but weren’t. If she thought about it logically, it kind of made sense, since more often than not kids copied how the people around them acted. Still, it was such a  _ pain _ . Yeah, she could ignore the bullies since they didn’t matter in the grand scale of things, but at some point being pushed around turned boring.

Hopefully she could convince her new school to let her skip another grade before the end of the semester. Dealing with seventh graders would be better than dealing with sixth graders, right? 

Or at least, she hoped. 

But back to the road trip. Sandy was excited,  _ really _ , but having to sit in a car for hours upon hours on end was  _ killing  _ her. She was already done with the scarf she was crocheting and because she had used more yarn than what she had thought she would need, there wasn’t any left for her to start on the hat she wanted to give Luci for Christmas. Her Nintendo was out of battery. She couldn’t read because, well, dealing with her dyslexia day-to-day wasn’t  _ that  _ hard, reading while in a moving car  _ was _ . So  _ that  _ was out too. It was sunny, so she didn’t feel tired, which meant that taking a nap was not an option… 

What she was trying to say, it’s that she was bored. 

So, so  _ bored _ . 

And she was making sure her parents knew. After all, she was technically nine years old, right? She had the right  _ and  _ the duty to act like a kid. 

“Mami-,” Sandy said for what was the umpteenth time in the last hour or so. 

“You are bored, we know,” her mom sighed. It looked like she was finally getting to her parents, after six hours of non-stop travel. Nice. “Look, the map says that there is a rest stop in ten miles. We are going to eat there, can you wait until then? I am sure we can find something for you to do there.” 

“Okay,” she chirped. Ten miles she could do, at least if food was on the line. 

Against her hopes, though, the next ten miles took  _ forever _ . By the time her dad had entered the parking lot, Sandy was all but vibrating on her chair and ready to go go  _ go _ . As soon as the car was parked and the child lock had been lifted, she all but threw herself out of her seat, almost choking herself in the process because she had forgotten to unbuckle her seat belt. Ignoring Luci’s snickering, Sandy unbuckled her seatbelt and left the car with as much dignity as she had left. Which was surprisingly a lot, for a technically nine year old at least. 

Looking around the rest stop, she blinked against the discomfort that had settled on her gut. Huh, that was weird. Eyes narrowing against the feeling, she turned to her parents and watched them as they shared a  _ look _ . 

Oh, good, so she wasn’t the only one unnerved. 

Luci stepped out of the car and moved next to her, hazel eyes shimmering in curiosity. 

“So it’s this one of-,” Luci began to ask, but was stopped when their mom put a hand on her shoulder and shook her head. 

Sandy sighed. 

Great. 

_ This should be fun _ , she thought as she brushed the wrinkles out of her sunshine yellow dress and grazed the item hidden under it’s skirt as a reassurance. 

“Come on, mija.” Her mom said and turned Luci towards the... _ Cracker Barrel _ ? Huh, she didn’t realize there  _ were  _ Cracker Barrels’ in the 90s. “Your sister needs to do something before she joins us inside.” Beatriz sent her a look. “Be careful,” she said and then started walking with Luci into the restaurant. 

Sandy watched them go into the restaurant and then the only people in the parking lot- apart from  _ them _ \- were her dad and her. 

Her dad shifted in place.

“Do you have your things?” He asked, sending her a concerned look. 

She patted her side and sent him a sunny smile, knowing that people couldn’t help but to relax once she smiled  _ that  _ way. It was odd, really. How easy was it to convince people when she smiled in a certain way, as if a mere smile was able of blinding them from the truth. 

Odd.

“Yep!” she said brightly. “Don’t worry, I will be okay doing this alone. If  _ they  _ are here-,” she continued, nodding towards the shop that the both of them were  _ definitively not looking at _ \- “then the others are keeping their distance. I also put on the perfume I got as a gift this morning, so even if the others are close, they won’t sense me.”

Eduardo Aguirre just looked at her for a beat and then sighed, suddenly looking as if the weight of the sky had fallen upon his shoulders. Her heart went to him, really, but they both knew they were in a delicate situation and they needed to be careful.

“Alright, but remember: If you need help-” he began to say, but they were taking too long and she was getting angsty. Most of the time, their  _ kind  _ didn’t like to wait. 

“-I will scream, I know, papi. We have gone over this before.” She gestured for him to get into the restaurant. “Go, I will be there in a minute.”

Her dad sent her a last look before turning and moving towards the restaurant in an almost robotic march. 

Sandy winced. Yeah, he was really worried. 

Not that he was wrong to be worried. The three ladies knitting were very unnerving, in a very  _ familiar  _ way. Hell, even the warm yellow  _ thing  _ they were knitting was sort of ominous. But then again, she did know  _ who  _ they were, maybe that was what made the scene much more sinister. 

Taking a deep breath, she rolled back her shoulders and skipped her way to the ladies, stopping a meter away and tilting her head. 

“What are you knitting?” She asked, voice soft and childlike. 

The lady on the left sent her a stern look. She was the oldest of the trio, with deep wrinkles marring her face and lips chapped by the relentless sun. Her eyes were a deep onyx and seemed to be haunted by old and new decisions. She wore a somber attire, similar to a funeral gown.

“A third of a whole,” the old lady said. “A piece of a triumvirate.”

Atropos. 

“One of the projects that will bring change,” said the youngest one, the one sitting on the right. Her youthful face shone under the sun and her green eyes twinkled with the knowledge brought forth by the destruction of hundreds of civilizations. She was dressed in yellows and pinks, bright colors making her look kind and welcoming, even as she spun the thread of the yellow yarn. 

Clotho. 

“Or so we hope,” interrupted the one sitting in the middle. She looked neither young nor old, face frozen in time and red eyes shining keenly. As she spoke, her fingers swiftly ran over the yellow thread, as if she were measuring something. Unlike the other two, she did not bother hiding her inhumanity and her skin almost seemed to sparkle under the sun. 

Lachesis. 

The Moirai. The Fates. 

How interesting.

“Will this be a long scarf? A short one? An infinity scarf?” Sandy asked, and her eyes fell upon the thread. It was yellow, as she had noted, but there was something on that particular shade of yellow that bothered her. Fidgeting with the hem of her skirt, she blinked when it fluttered on the corner of her eye. 

That was it. 

The yellow they were using  _ was the same shade as her dress. _

Oh fuck. 

Well, the game was up, she supposed. 

“That is for you to determine, child,” Atropos said. 

“Huh?” Was all she could say. What was happening? Since when did the Moirai accept constructive criticism?

“We don’t,” Clotho said, amused. “Accept constructive criticism, that it’s it. But this is a special occasion, o young one.”

Sandy slowly looked away from the youngest Fate, hoping that whatever mind reading mojo they had only worked through eye contact. She would prefer to keep her secrets her own. 

“You should know, you are a demigod,” Lachesis said. 

And well. Sandy did realize the situation was serious, cross her heart and hope to die or whatever, but the stillness that came after was suffocating… So, she decided to break it. 

“I am a whot?” 

In front of her, Clotho dropped the yarn she was spinning and clapped her hands in delight. 

“Yer a wizard, Harry!”

Well, that was new. She hadn’t thought anyone would get the reference. But then again, if anyone would know about a book that hadn’t been written yet, it  _ would  _ be the Fates.

“You knew,” Lachesis said, more as a statement than a question, but Sandy chose to answer anyway. 

“It was difficult not to,” she admitted with a shrug. “If the dyslexia and ADHD and the Greek monsters stalking me hadn’t tipped me off, being all but told of my inheritance by the Aztec pantheon would have.”

And hadn’t  _ that  _ been a surprise? Yeah, she had guessed that she might be in for some trouble when she had seen a motherfucking  _ cyclops _ of all things, but she had not expected meeting the Aztec Pantheon. 

It had been pretty cool, she wasn’t going to lie. Their center of power had been beautiful and the road she had to travel to get there? Yeah, it was without a shadow of doubt one of the most breathtaking sights she had ever seen. That she  _ would  _ ever see, probably.

Even if the Aztec Pantheon  _ had  _ initially met her with distrust, she wouldn’t begrudge their meeting. Their wariness was understandable, after all. She was both a Greek demigod-or a ‘Champion of the West’ as they had called them- and white, which meant descendant from the  _ criollo  _ class. A threat doubled by her ascendency, both human and inhuman.

The West had never been kind to Latin America. Not when the Conquistadores razed nations to the ground. Not when the criollos ruled with an iron fist and little mercy. Not when they intervened over and over again, leaving nothing but conflict in their wake.

Yes, the West had never been particularly kind to Latin America and its inhabitants, so it wasn’t much of a stretch to believe that a  _ Western  _ demigod could be seen as a threat to the region. The concern was fair and it was warranted. And yet, after their meeting they had still allowed her family to stay in Mexico City and under their conditional protection. 

Yeah, they were pretty cool.

The Moirai blinked in unison, and suddenly. Suddenly, she understood why they seemed familiar. 

_ She  _ did unnerving shit like that. 

Wait, did that mean that she was a copycat? Or the Moirai had looked into the future and copied her weirdness? Was this a matter of the egg or the rooster?

Or-

Wait. Maybe it was an immortal thing?

Maybe-.

“You have met the Aztec Pantheon?”

Focus snapping back to the present, she nodded. 

“Well, yeah. I might be Venezuelan through my birth mother and my birth, but a year after the Aguirre adopted me, they moved to Mexico City. After that, it was just a matter of time before the pantheon contacted me,” she admitted, but remained quiet regarding the Aztec Pantheon’s motivations. The Greek Pantheon probably wouldn’t take it kindly that the Aztecs had only contacted her to deem whether she was a threat or not, they had pretty big egos after all. 

...

Was she wrong to like the Aztect Pantheon more than her own? 

Probably, but it wasn’t like she had much experience with the Greeks to know whether they were cool or not. And what she  _ did  _ know about the Greeks did not paint a good picture. Like at all. 

“Well, that was outside our expectations,” Atropos said. “And yet, it does not fall outside our parameters.”

“Right! That was one of the reasons why we chose them, wasn’t it?” Clotho agreed. 

“I suppose,” said Lachesis as she watched her carefully. 

“Sorry, them? You mean, me? I was chosen? For what exactly?”

“Don’t be obtuse, youngling,” Lachesis admonished her. “To be a twiceborn, of course.”

… And just like that, her secrets were not her own. 

Sighing, she ran a hand through her hair and leveled the Moirai with a narrowed gaze. 

“Ah,” she said. “Am I to be a pawn to your games?” She asked, expressionless and as unrelenting and as sharp as the sun in midwinter. 

“As if you would allow that,” Atropos laughed, which was frankly much more terrifying than one could imagine. “Do not worry, child. We brought you all here simply because we are curious.”

“And bored!” Clotho added and shrugged at her sisters’ glare. “What?! It’s true!”

Sandy tilted her head. 

“What?”

“All the gods-no matter their pantheon- are aware of the infinite number of parallel universes, but only those who deal with Fate are aware of the universes in which our present is merely a tale to be told through the pages of a book,” Lachesis began to explain. “We know of Riordan’s books. We know of how they foretell the events that will take place upon the next twenty years, but as our role does not allow it, we cannot do anything with this knowledge.”

“But an outsider could. But  _ our chosen  _ can,” Atropos continued. “And so, we decided to change the players on the board. At least for this universe. We were curious to see what a being with such knowledge is capable of. After all, our chosen once belonged outside the Fate of this world, and therefore they can change Fate’s flow. We are curious to see what kind of change you will bring forth.”

“We were also bored of watching Fate unfold in the same way throughout every universe,” Clotho added. “So we decided to choose souls that were destined to die young to spice things up!” 

Well, if she hadn’t known what an information overload was before, she sure as hell knew  _ now _ . Still, there was something bothering her… Well, multiple somethings but she would get to those later. 

“Aren’t the Olympians going to be pissed off if I start playing around with Fate willy-nilly?” She asked as she rubbed her temple in hopes of staving off an upcoming headache.  _ Gods _ , she was in for a shitshow, wasn’t she? 

… Not that she wasn’t getting excited by the prospect, but  _ Hades _ , she was in for some trouble. 

“Not if they know what is best for them,” Clotho said with a smile, teaching Sandy that  _ holy shit _ was the combination of a sunshine-type personality and threats pants-wettingly horrific. Also, that maybe she was going to need some therapy after the whole ordeal. Not that she wasn’t already going to therapy, but apparently she would need to order therapy times two in her future. Her very near future. Dr. Rojas was going to  _ flip  _ when she realized who exactly was behind some of her many, many,  _ many  _ issues.

“What our sister is saying is that you have our blessings, and the gods know better to interfere with your plans,” Lachesis said with a roll of her eyes. 

“You are giving me a  _ carte blanche _ to just, like, mess with the timeline? Just like that?”

“Yes,” Lachesis nodded. “We have watched you on both lives, so we realize that your ‘messing’ with the timeline is more likely to be beneficial than not, so we are giving you the freedom to do so as you please.”

“After all, you care about the lives of the other demigods and will do anything to extend their lifespans,” Atropos said, voice soft and  _ oh so _ tired. “That is more than we can do.”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Exhaling slowly, she let herself relax as the breath left her lungs. Atropos wasn’t  _ wrong _ . If what she had read in the books held true, the lifespan of her fellow Greek demigods- or well, the lifespan of  _ any  _ demigod- and their quality of life was terrible. Now that she was part of their world, she would stop at nothing to better their lives. Already, she had ideas upon ideas of how to improve the shambling institution that was Camp Half-Blood. Plans that could be implemented to increase morale and moves that could be done in order to increase the quality of life. 

She had always been a planner, hadn’t she? Even back then, before she died. Now it was time to see if she could also become a doer. 

Cassandra opened her eyes. 

“Alright, so how does this blessing work?”

“It’s simple, really,” Lachesis said with a shrug. “You have the ability to interfere with Fate. As such, you are not beholden to any prophecy if you do not want to be. Furthermore, when it comes to quests you can choose to be a ‘non-person’ and as such will not count towards the rule of 3s.”

“Is that the rule that says that quest parties should only be built in multiples of 3 because it is a sacred number?”

“Correct.”

“Isn’t that too overpowered?” Sandy asked, because it really was. They were basically giving her a free pass to go at the tapestry of Fate with a jackhammer, and they seemed to be doing it  _ gladly _ . 

Jesu-. Gods,  _ they were.  _

And wasn’t that a daunting thought?

“Aren’t the gods?” Clotho countered. 

Well. She  _ did  _ have a point there. The gods were kind of OP, even if they barely used their powers, letting their children do all the heavy lifting.

“Now, youngling,” Lachesis shooed her away. “Return to your adult supervision. You might have more questions, but we have been talking for some time and you still need to travel a large distance before sundown.”

Silently mouthing ‘adult supervision’ in disbelief, she shook her head and then nodded with hesitation. She had a  _ lot  _ of questions.

“Go,” urged Atropos. “And I would advise you to keep this secret close to your chest.”

Sandy bit her lips and rocked back and forth on her feet. She had so many questions, but… 

The sound of her stomach grumbling made her decision for her. 

She nodded. 

“Alright,” she said and hesitated. “Just-. Just don’t cut any electric blue yarn short, please.” 

After saying this, she turned and ran into the Cracker and Barrel and into the arms of her adoptive parents and her sister. 

The lunch that followed was all but quiet as she explained her encounter to her family, describing the situation with extreme prejudice. After all, she had never been one to keep big secrets from them. They knew of her past life and of her encounter with the Aztec Pantheon. Knew of the monsters that haunted her and of her parentage. 

How could they not? They had the Sight, every single one of them, whether they had been born with it or it had been gifted to them. They knew of the world that hid behind the Veil, and well, they were not about to let her confront it alone. 

That is why, after they finished eating and got into the car she told them of her plan. 

“I need to go to Camp Half-Blood.”

“And you will,” her dad said, “ _ next summer. _ ” 


	2. Sandy Decides to Cause Problems On Purpose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's always either: _Daddy doesn't love me and mommy is a god_ or _Mommy can't protect me and daddy is a god..._  
>  Except, when it's not.

A year passes in disarray.

Next summer comes. 

Somewhere in Northern Virginia-inside a stereotypical white picket fence house- Sandy awakens.

... 

_ Unfortunately _ . 

It was the sunlight tickling her eyelids that had done it. The barely there twinkle of sunshine painting the inside of her eyelids bloody red, as if it were an omen for the upcoming days. Still, it meant that the sun was up, and that meant that she was up. There was nothing she could do about that. And she had  _ tried _ . Once the sun was up, there was no rest for the wicked. And sadly, that  _ did  _ include her. At least by the standards of some -cough the Gods cough -. She  _ had  _ been given permission to stir shit up, after all, and she was planning to do just so.

What a fun and terrifying thing, to have permission to fuck the timeline up. 

The Fates had all but handed her the permission to change things as much her little heart desired. To shape  _ and  _ reshape. They had given her power, plain and simple. And like all power, the power on her hands was  _ intoxicating _ . That was the problem. That kind of power was dangerous. That kind of power came with a  _ weight _ . 

_ Absolute power corrupts absolutely _ .

The Gods were a fitting example of that.

Who was she to decide who lived and who died? Who was  _ she  _ to reshape destiny? 

No one, really. Just another demigod out of many, just another piece on the board. A pawn on the games of the gods.

A  _ nobody _ .

(A lesson learned from Greek mythos: There is power in being Nobody)

But. 

But that wasn’t right. That wasn’t  _ fair ( _ But what did the gods care of fairness?). Demigods deserved more than empty platitudes and fangs to their throat. They deserved more than the promise of a tired life full of sacrifices and tragedies. Demigods deserved more.

More than lies and deadly prophecies. More than neglect and loneliness.

They didn’t deserve to be discarded.

They deserved to  _ live _ . They deserved to be happy.

They deserved it and  _ they would get it _ , come hell or high water.

She would make sure of that, even if it meant her death. 

Why fear death when it was an old companion?

To achieve that, she would do the impossible. She would break taboos and social mores. She would tear down Fate and Godly Laws and anything else that would get on her way. She would change the very foundations of this new world of hers and in the process stop the razing and destruction that had been prophesied. 

As long as no more children died in the hands of monsters, as long as demigods could reach adulthood. As long as she could do that?

Well, she was ready to tear into the tapestry of Fate with her bare hands.

She wasn’t all that afraid of breaking a nail or two in the process. 

Lowering her right hand from where she had been playing with her hair as she was thinking, she stood up from her bed with a sigh. A glance out the window told her that it would be another hour or so before her family would wake up so she had time. Time to go over the first stage of her plan before they woke up. Time to check and double check that nothing was slipping by her.

Time to think. Time to plan.

With this in mind, she put her clothes and made her way down to the kitchen, but not before grabbing a binder off her desk. Binder in hand, grasped firmly like the lifeline it had become, she carefully stepped down the stairs, trying not to wake anyone up. 

She felt oddly guilty doing so, as if she wasn’t supposed to sneak around the house without her parents.  _ Normal  _ children didn’t  _ normally  _ do so, after all… Or did they? It wasn’t like she remembered much of her first childhood, and she didn’t have any friends her age so maybe they  _ did  _ sneak around their parents and she just didn’t know about it.

Shaking her head at the thought, she walked into the kitchen and turned the lights on. From then, routine took over as she flitted about the kitchen, turning the coffee pot, getting herself a glass of orange juice, and so on and so on.

Twenty minutes later, Sandy was sitting on the kitchen table, her binder open in front of her and smiling as if she were a cat that had gotten the canary. If everything went as planned, by the end of summer three more cabins would be added to Camp Half-Blood. Of course, she still needed to check the Camp’s by-laws before she could do anything. If there were by-laws. Knowing what she knew, it would be unlikely for there to be a safety protocol but they might have something regarding the construction of other cabins if only to be a pain on her ass. If they did have something, then she would have to change them. 

It was that simple.

As her thoughts flew away from her reach, she hummed an ancient melody, something she had heard once upon a dream and wanted to remember. It just seemed important.

“Are-. Are those  _ claws in your hand _ ?” A voice broke the peaceful silence, startling Sandy. And of course, once she was startled she did what any sensible being would do in her situation: she dropped and rolled, ending up in a heap some ways off the chair she had been previously in. Looking up at the ceiling with a sigh, she vaguely noted that she had managed to roll right into a patch of sunlight on the kitchen floor. 

_ Nice _ . 

“No-. You know what?” The same voice that had startled her continued, allowing Sandy to identify the speaker as the pre-law student living in their basement. “Nevermind that. Are your eyes  _ glowing _ ?”

She blinked, as if trying to look into her own eyes, only to stop when she realized that that wasn’t possible. 

“Oh, yeah,” she said with a matter-of-fact tone while making no effort whatsoever to move from her-surprisingly comfortable- spot on the floor. “They do that sometimes.”

Silence ensued. 

Squinting up at the ceiling, Sandy deliberated silently whether she staying on the floor was worth it or if she should get up and continue as if nothing had happened. On one hand, the sun was hitting her  _ just right _ and she was really enjoying that. On the other, the floor was probably  _ dirty  _ and if her mami saw her, she would make her take a shower and the trip would be delayed… At the end, common sense won the argument and, sending her new favorite spot a melancholic look, she stood up.

Sighing, she brushed the non-existent lint clinging to her shorts and sat back on her chair with a soft  _ thump _ . 

That seemed to snap Cloe out of whatever spiral her mind had begun climbing down. The brown-eyed Venezuelan shook herself from her stupor and rolled her eyes. 

“ _ Demigods _ ,” Sandy heard her mutter, her tone dripping with disbelief. 

Sandy snickered.

Yeah, that sounded about right. 

She watched as Cloe made her way across the kitchen and glared at the coffee pot suspiciously when she found it full.

“Cass-,” Cloe began.

“Don’t worry,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “I didn’t drink any. I do actually want to grow tall, Miss Reyes.”

“Mhhhmm..?” Cloe sent her a  _ look _ . 

“Fine, I  _ was  _ going to drink it,”she admitted grudgingly. “But I am too jittery already, so I decided not to. I  _ am  _ old enough to know better, y’know.”

“Ah, yes the blessings of reincarnation,” Cloe said, a smile dancing on her lips. “Also, once again, just call me Cloe. You are making me feel old.”

“Well, you are twenty-one. That is ancient.”

“You died on your twentieth first birthday.”

“I said what I said.”

Cloe snorted. 

“Alright,” Cloe relented. “Anyway, how are you feeling? Nervous? Excited?”

There were no words in the English vocabulary-but some in the Spanish vocabulary- to describe how unimpressed was the look Sandy sent to the mortal. Not one. 

“What am I? A kid?”

If the silence that followed was telling, the look in Cloe’s eyes was even more so. 

Sandy grimaced.

“Yeah, don’t answer that,” she said while shaking her head. “I am  _ really  _ nervous, but that is pretty normal, I guess. How about you? Excited about meeting your girlfriend?”

Cloe blushed.

“Yes,” she said and proceeded to drown any further conversation by filling her mug of coffee and drinking it all in a go. 

Sandy watched in horrified silence. The coffee had been straight black, with no sugar or milk or even creamer.  _ Yuck _ . She shuddered to think about what her tastebuds were experiencing.

“Ookaayyy.” Sandy said and slowly looked away, trying to find a way to change the topic. “ _ Anyway _ , how is that thing I asked you to do going?”

“I am working on it, it’s more difficult than we thought it would be. I will update you at the end of the summer.”

Sandy nodded. Yeah, that tracked. She knew from the beginning that it was one of her more ambitious plans, but she had to try anyway. These things took time, so it was probable that she would have to wait a couple of years before the seeds she had begun to plant sprouted and bore fruits. 

Looking back down at her plans, she sighed and closed the binder. As much as she wanted to continue working and reworking them, she could hear her parents beginning to stir up and she wanted to double check her things before they left. It was a bad habit of hers-and of her entire family, really- to misjudge time and end up late to whatever thing they were attending. So to ensure they didn’t leave too late, it was better for her to make sure that everything was packed as it needed to be. 

“Thanks, I owe you one.”

“Don’t worry about it, it’s a good idea and something I will gladly participate in,” Cloe reassured as she served herself another cup of coffee. Sandy glanced at the cup of coffee with envy. Gods, she couldn’t wait to be old enough to drink coffee again. 

She shook her head and nodded at Cloe.

“Well,” she said while looking over her shoulder as she walked to the door. “I am going to double-check I have everything. So see you at breakfast.”

Three hours later- an hour after they were supposed to leave  _ in the first place _ \- they were finally on the road. 

Almost.

After fifteen minutes on the road, Sandy realized something very important: she had forgotten her binder. So,  _ of course _ , she had to tell her papi to turn around, and, because he knew that she wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important, he did, which led them to lose a total of forty-five minutes. 

Oops.

Her bad. 

Still, after their unexpected binder-retrieving sidequest, they hit the road and soon they were on their way to Camp Half-Blood, Long Island, New York. 

Sandy had looked it up and made the math-or well, had made her mami make the math-, the trip was supposed to take around six to seven hours, if nothing went wrong. That was a  _ very  _ big if, especially when one added her half-bloodness into the mix. So of course, things ended up going wrong halfway to their destination. 

Of course. 

Because, why not?

To be completely honest, it  _ might  _ have been her fault. Maybe. Perhaps.  _ Mayhaps _ . She  _ had  _ been bored and she  _ had  _ wanted something interesting to happen but she had  _ not  _ been calling out for a monster to hunt them! 

Anything but that!

The possibility would be a secret she would take to her grave, though. There wasn’t any need for anyone to know that she had jinxed herself. No, her parents wouldn’t let her live that down,  _ ever _ .

Still, somewhere around their fourth hour of travel-or maybe the third? She had gotten bored and zoned out so she really had no idea-, she did feel her stomach drop. 

A bad sign if she knew one. A terrible one, really, because it meant that she wasn’t going to  _ get  _ to Camp Half-Blood until much later than she had though. 

Ugh. There went her carefully planned plans, puffing away because of the Demigod Paradox. 

What a pain. 

With a sigh, she lifted her head from where it had been reclining against the car’s window and shook it, as if to lift the fog of boredom that had fallen upon her somewhere around the two hour mark. 

“Something wrong?” Her mami asked, meeting Sandy’s eyes in the rearview mirror. Tired blue eyes met hazel eyes and Sandy smiled at her mother with resignation. 

“We are going to have to make a not-so-quick pit stop,”

_ Of course _ , her demigodness meant that something had to happen. Of course. That would have made things too easy, and nothing was ever  _ easy  _ for demigods. Why would things be easy? The harder a demigods journey was, the stronger they were if they survived and the gods, above all, the gods wanted strong demigods. They wanted strong  _ soldiers _ . Who cared if they were children as long as they could kill those stronger and bigger?

Not the gods, that was for sure. 

Fuckers didn’t even pay for their therapy bills, the assholes.

So yeah,  _ of course _ , their trip had to be interrupted by a monster. It was Fate, or whatever. It wouldn’t be a demigod’s journey otherwise. There needed to be  _ drama _ , to be  **tragedy** , otherwise it would be  **_boring_ ** . And no one would want that, right? Demigods needed to be teared down so that their faith in the gods would build them up once they reached camp.

It was formulaic. It was usual. It was brainwashing. It was part of the script woven into the tapestry of Fate. 

_ It pissed her off _ .

Luckily for Sandy- and unluckily for the Olympian-, she had been given permission to go off-script, and once a domino had fallen, what followed was an avalanche. Or well, so she hoped. 

It would be kind of like poetic justice and Destiny was all over that, right?

Annoyed by her train of thoughts, she looked out the window just in time to see a sign. No, not a godly one, an  _ actual  _ sign pointing out that the next exit was a picnic spot. Still, a sign was a sign, and ignoring it would probably be bad, soooo….

“Can we go out on the next exit and stop at the picnic place thingie?” Leaning in between the two front seats, she asked as she looked at her papi. “Pretty sure we are going to run into trouble sometime soon-ish and I don’t want a car crash to be the cause of my death in this life. It’s kinda anticlimactic.”

Her mami sent her a look ™. Sandy shrugged. Before her mami could begin berating her for her death jokes- which, yeah not very healthy but she was a demigod, literally nothing she did was good for her long term mental health-, her papi sighed and nodded.

“Yeah, of course. Do you have an idea of what kind of encounter we will have?” He sounded as if he had come back from a long trip and found out that the dog had accidentally eaten half the furniture. Not afraid nor surprised, just annoyed and resigned.

Humming thoughtfully, Sandy glanced out the window and at the few clouds adorning the blue sky. 

“Uhh… I think a dog is involved? Maybe?” She shrugged again. “ ‘m not getting much info, sorry.”

Her mami sighed,  _ again _ .

“Don’t apologize,” she said. “We both know that your predictions are more like educated guesses half the time, so it was a long shot anyway.”

“Are we killing a dog?” Lucia asked in horror. 

“No, cariño,” her mami began to say. “We are fighting a monster, who is going to  _ look  _ like a dog but isn’t.”

“It’s probably going to be an evil dog, so we have the duty to kill it,” she said.

“Dogs can’t be evil,” her sister said and sent her a look that very clearly questioned her mental capacities. “They are  _ dogs _ .”

Well,  _ duh _ .

Rolling her eyes and sticking her tongue out to her sister, she leaned back to her chair, not ready to argue whether animals were capable of morality or not, except-.

“Of course magic dogs can be evil! First of all, there  _ are  _ magic dogs so clearly they can be  _ evil  _ magic dogs.” 

Except that she really could never let sleeping dogs die. 

“Nu-huh,” Lucia said. “Even magic dogs can’t be evil. Animals don’t have laws so they can’t break them and do evil things.”

She was opening her mouth to refute her, when the car began to slow down. On her moment of distraction, they had made it to the picnic place and her papi was parking the car. 

She reached for her celestial bronze dagger. 

“Ok, then I can probably deal-”

“Girls, stay in the car,” her mami said, tone soft but unrelenting. “We will take care of it.”

Blinking slowly, she opened her mouth to protest, but one look at her parents shut her up. 

_ Ooo _ kay.

Releasing her grip on her dagger, she raised her hands up to show that she would let them take care of whatever monster had decided to be stupid enough to try to eat someone from the Aguirre family. 

Her parents were  _ so  _ cool.

The wait was probably the worst part of it.

Her personal brand of  _ eccentricity  _ made it so she always knew if she was going to be attacked or not, but not  _ when _ she would be attacked, and well, she wasn’t exactly someone known for her patience. 

Not in a  _ long  _ time anyway.

So yeah, the wait was always the worst part of the eternal game of cat and mouse that was her life. She was used to being in danger- she had been in danger all her life- but the uncertainty of when was what managed to get her every time. Monsters were haunting her, but she would never know the time of said hauntings. Not to the minute, and that made all the difference.

Yeah, the waiting was the worst part of the entire thing. Long and drawn out, slow and boring. She was not equipped to stand the entire waiting process. 

The fight, on the other hand? That was more her speed. 

The books hadn’t been completely wrong, ADHD  _ was  _ a useful tool for survival when fighting monsters. It was also useful enough to let you follow high speed fights while you were not an active participant on them. It was always faster than what most humans could process, the fighting. Less than a tenth of the time it took for it to begin, but ten times as exhilarating. It was addicting, in a way. The rush of adrenaline, the sense of accomplishment at victory. 

It was a dangerous feeling. It was easy to see how so many demigods fell prey to the ideals of heroism if every fight was like that. 

And yet, being a witness to the fighting was all one needed to see the truth. The horror, the disgust, the realization that it was wrong. The sudden clarity of the inherent wrongness of the system. The issue was, not  _ one  _ demigod would sit back and watch when someone was in danger, so they remained trapped in the cycle of heroism their parents had dropped them in.

She had only seen another demigod fight for his life once, and once had been enough. It had been a young boy, maybe a year or two older than her, fighting a harpy in the distance, too far away for her to help but not far enough for her not to be able to see. The fighting dragged for five painful minutes, the harpy’s sharp talons breaking skin and spilling blood. For a brief moment, she had been afraid she was about to see someone die but… But the demigod had been  _ lucky  _ and managed to get a lucky shot in, surviving to life another day. Then he had disappeared, but not before she saw the distinct tattoo on his forearm.

A lyre with the letters SPQR written beneath. 

The experience had not changed her, per se, because she had always known the inherent wrongness of the system the demigods were forced to be a part of. What it had done was make her realize that, maybe just maybe, she would be able to help more than just the Greeks. But well, she had a long way to go before she could do  _ that _ .

The fight, as always, wasn’t nearly as long as the wait. Her parents, mortal as they were, were too good and too experienced for that. As soon as the orthrus,-what else could have it been but an orthrus? Of course she would have attracted Cerberus' two-headed brother- appeared on the horizon, her parents were moving. 

It was always a wonder to watch them hunt, to watch them confront the immortal and bring it to it’s heels. 

The Percy Jackson books made it seem as if mortals were weak. As if they were defenseless. 

They could not be more wrong if they  **tried** . Mortals, after all, never lacked willpower and anyone with enough willpower could change the world. The magic that was intrinsically linked to the trait was just an added benefit.

Humanity always did manage to go above and beyond expectations and mortals with the sight were proof of that. 

Magic born and bred out of sheer willpower and desire for growth. Different than that of those linked to the Egyptian pantheon, but not less powerful. Magic born and bred out of the desire to be more, to protect and to cherish. 

Greek mythos was full of regular mortals triumphing, so it was no surprise that extraordinary mortals could come from ordinary circumstances. 

It was over in a flash. 

One second, the orthrus jumped, dry lips pulling back into a snarl that showed their bloody canines. 

The next, the air began smelling of ozone and the wind rustled the grass beneath the monster. The expectation tinged the air and then-. And then it happened. Swiftly, smoothly, like an artist adding a flourish with their brush. A lance of light pierced the orthrus head, while spikes grew from the ground and impaled the creature. 

Soon, there was only dust left. 

From that moment on, everything went smoothly. There were no more surprise attacks, not more unfortunate side quests. There was only kilometers upon kilometers of highway behind them and the future-her future- ahead of her. 

Looking at the slope that became the hill that became the haven, she smiled. 

“ _ Hello _ Camp Half-Blood, you don’t know me yet, but you  **will** . ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoop. I have had this chapter _almost_ done for so long that I finally decided to finish. Hopefully the wait was well worth it!

**Author's Note:**

> What is it? Another Self-Insert story? When I haven't finished the other? Mayhaps. The PJO Renaissance lit a fire under my ass and I couldn't just not write this.
> 
> Thoughts? Was it good? Are you interested? Who do you think is Sandy's father? Please comment and let me know! 


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